Kevin McCarthy, with Hendry County Schools, saves the day with a loss prevention solution. Hendry County is a small school district located in southern Florida. Serving more than 7,000 students in grades K-12 at six elementary, two middle, and two high schools, there are an abundance of responsibilities that go into running institutions. One important responsibility is cultivating relationships with parents and community stakeholders, and also with businesses that aid in providing top-notch equipment and services, like Kitchen Brains.
It all started two years ago when Kevin McCarthy, Director of Hendry County School Facilities, Maintenance, & Transportation, proposed the installation of Kitchen Brains Modularm 75LC Remote Notification System. With Hendry County located in a hurricane-prone state, the school district wanted to take extra precautionary steps to avoid food spoilage from power outages. The 75LC Remote Notification System provided McCarthy with temperature and AC failure alarms when he needed them most. The system has continued to save energy, improve efficiency, reduce coil icing, lower maintenance costs, and help maintain product integrity. During a recent power outage, Hendry Schools remained calm despite the neighboring chaos.
In preparation for Hurricane Matthew, Hendry County’s entire school system was closed to be utilized as emergency shelters for the residents. “Had there been no notification of the power loss from Kitchen Brains 75LC, the food in our kitchen would have been warmed for three days and spoiled” said Kevin McCarthy. Instead, McCarthy was able to contact the power company Thursday afternoon and they were able to restore power in time to save the inventory. “It’s amazing that we live in a world where technology can alert us when there is a power outage, and when the power is restored,” said McCarthy. As of now, nine Hendry County School kitchens function with Kitchen Brains Modularm 75LC Remote Notification System.
If you think your company can profit and save from custom timers, controllers, or appliance networking software visit our website at www.KitchenBrains.com, OR take direct action and schedule a consultation with a Kitchen Brains retail representative today.

Hot Harry’s Makes Mark on East Coast

Founder of Hot Harry’s Fresh Burritos, Samir Abdallah, Brings California-Mex Cuisine to East Coast.
Hot Harry’s is making their mark as a standout destination for fast casual dining.
With its simple mission to quickly serve fresh, made-from-scratch, affordable food in a clean and comfortable environment, Hot Harry’s holds the recipe for success.
Having previous success with the (FAST.)® TRACKER™ Timers at Wayback Burgers, formerly Jake’s Wayback Burgers, Richard Tarascio, now president of Hot Harry’s, was already onboard with the brand. “The product quality and customer service Kitchen Brains provides is unmatched in the industry,” Tarascio remarked. “It is important for a growing brand like ours to have a strong partner like Kitchen Brains that we can rely on for best in class quality and service.” When posed with the question as to which timer was best for Hot Harry’s, the answer was clear. The industry leading (FASTIMER.)® Tracker Timer was the only option for Tarascio’s new business endeavor.
The TRACKER solution has continued to help Hot Harry’s carry out their mission, cooking many diverse recipes, including tostadas, shrimp, cod, poppers, tortilla chips, and shells, that use the freshest ingredients and are safely prepared to perfection. Andrew Pinto, Hot Harry’s Account Manager says, “Kitchen Brains is a proud partner of Hot Harry’s Fresh Burritos, and we look forward to helping the company with future success.”
If your company can benefit from custom timers, controllers, or appliance networking software for grilling, frying, or holding, visit our website at www.kitchenbrains.com or contact Andrew directly at apinto@kitchenbrains.com.

Del Taco upgrades to Kitchen Brains Timers to Improve Efficiency

The (FASTIMER)® TT-500 is one of the most innovative and versatile commercial kitchen timers in the foodservice industry. Due to its beneficial components and flexibility, Del Taco has recently upgraded all their kitchen timers to the TT-500. Del Taco has over 500 stores specializing in Mexican cuisine as well as American food, using fresh ingredients made to order.
The TT-500 is easy to operate and has additional features which maximizes the timer’s use in the kitchen. “We now have the ability to program automatic alerts or reminders that target specific tasks within our restaurants. Whether it’s a reminder for our employees to wash their hands or filter the oil, the alerts help us manage our kitchens better.” says Stacy Marler, Senior Director of Quality Assurance and Food Safety at Del Taco. The TT-500 ensures that all product is being cooked properly, meeting the highest standards for quality and food safety.
Employees at Del Taco have benefitted from the TT-500 because of its easy to use functions. With its built-in product build card library, employees can easily access a library of digitized build cards as a quick reference for each ingredient in a product build. The LCD touch screen displays an image of each product which is already programmed to the set recipe and time needed to cook the batch. Each timer has the ability to time a virtually unlimited amount of products, including multiple batches of each product, increasing productivity.
All of Kitchen Brains’ innovative timers are created to turn your facility into a smart commercial kitchen. Del Taco has maintained a loyal customer base by using fresh, quality product throughout its stores. Kitchen Brains is proud to be a partner with Del Taco and looks forward to assisting the company with continued success. #teamGENIUS

Pei Wei decides The Time Is Right™ for (FAST.)

Pei Wei believes that a balanced life begins with a balanced meal.
With a menu inspired by ancient Asian cooking, from the wok-fired classics of China to the street market spices of Thailand, Pei Wei showcases vibrant, modern cuisine that is always made-to-order. The ability to quickly produce a consistent product using quality ingredients is of the utmost importance. Pei Wei needed a robust custom timer enabling them to deliver their freshly made signature dishes
with ease and efficiency. They turned to Kitchen Brains, makers of the family of (FASTIMER.)® and (FASTRON.)® controls. By using a timer that conforms to Pei Wei’s specific needs, they are able to achieve spectacular results.“Kitchen Brains was the third company we contacted to assist us, they should have been the first”, commented Kevin Huckabone, Category Manager for P.F. CHANG’S CHINA BISTRO, Inc.“We provided a functional specification for our unique cooking operations and Kitchen Brains responded within 24 hours with several different options. We chose a custom Tracker Timer solution that Kitchen Brains turned around in a few weeks.”By working closely with Pei Wei, Kitchen Brains was able to quickly design, produce, and supply locations with a custom solution that fits Pei Wei’s specific needs. “We pride ourselves on offering the industry’s best
general market timers, but we also have a deep appreciation for the custom needs of operators and we are happy to work with them to design exactly what they need to be successful”, said Christian Koether, Vice President of Kitchen Brains. “Thankfully we have a flexible domestic manufacturing process and an internal team completely focused on quality and customer satisfaction.” Each of Pei Wei’s timers leave the Kitchen Brains factory pre-programmed with their specific menu needs. Additionally, through the Service Replacement Program, if any field failures occur, which are rare, a replacement is shipped next business day, at a significant savings, to avoid long periods of downtime. Kitchen Brains is proud to be a partner with Pei Wei and looks forward to assisting the company with continued success. If your company can benefit from custom timers,
controllers, or appliance networking software, visit our website at www.kitchenbrains.com or contact Christian Koether directly at ckoether@kitchenbrains.com.
#teamGENIUS

In August 2014, Rick Mason from Moore-Warren in Dothan, Alabama had an opportunity to support the Holmes County Schools District in Bonifay, Florida with product loss prevention.
The opportunity came through Steve Mayo, Holmes County Schools Maintenance. The proposal was to install a temperature monitoring system to alert for any elevated temperature conditions caused by equipment malfunctions or door ajar issues that can cause product loss or spoilage issues. In Mr. Mayo’s past experiences, he had to drive to each school to ensure the refrigeration temperature was met and kept within parameters, which resulted in a lot of
time wasted.
Towards the end of 2014, Moore-Warren, in conjunction with Kitchen Brains, started the pilot test with one school. Within a period of three months, a refrigeration system failure was encountered at the test location. The Modularm Monitoring System began detecting temperatures out of the norm and immediately started sending notifications to the remote school maintenance personnel. The Maintenance Department received the alerts and immediately started looking for a solution to avoid the imminent product loss.
Due to the system alerts and immediate response by maintenance technicians, the approximate savings were $25,000 to $30,000 for this one site, one failure. In addition to the product and cost savings, the alarm system provides an automatic light control option to minimize the consumption of energy by automatically turning off the lights when not in use.
The standard door ajar feature helps keep the doors closed. This option reduces maintenance and energy costs, since the system does not overwork itself to maintain temperature within parameters. The panic option brings safety to the kitchen personnel, generating panic alerts in case one is disabled inside the monitored compartment. After this out of range temperature event, it was decided to move forward and equip every school in the district with
the Kitchen Brains monitoring solution. #teamGENIUS

How Kitchen Brains Timers and Controllers Help Advancing C-Stores Keep Their Commitment to Excellence

Ensuring freshly baked bread every morning with Kitchen Brains Timers.
An established chain of 645 convenience stores offers more than just coffee; they serve a variety of fresh, built-to-order foods plus beverages and fuel services in making themselves an industry leader along the east coast. Bread is always baked fresh every morning to support a high standard of freshness and taste. Kitchen Brains developed a system specifically for the chain so that all of their bread is being properly monitored, ensuring consistency.
Each batch has its own carefully designed time to be prepared, baked, and held. The TT-500 timer from Kitchen Brains displays where the bread is located both physically and within the preparation process, allowing users to move and start a new batch when needed. Once the bread reaches its final holding place, a time is set to alert the staff at expiration. Kitchen Brains is continuing to develop products for this chain featuring next generation technology for the most controlled kitchen.
The flexible capabilities of Kitchen Brains timers allow convenience store operators the ability to use an assembly drawing or process sheet to complement their store format. Each process is organized so the holding times are displayed by food item and location. When the bread is finished cooking, it moves to the holding cabinet and then out for sale. Each step requires a set of times and alerts to make the move quickly, allowing the product to be consistently up to the highest standards.
Integrating Genius Suite applications from Kitchen Brains provides new ways to run a Smart Commercial Kitchen®. These products consistently help deliver the best in customer service and food excellence. Kitchen Brains is proud to be a partner with this convenience store chain and assist them in continuing to impress all parts of the foodservice industry. #teamGENIUS

ECOLAB: Cleaning Up With a Multipurpose Controller

Ecolab provides high-performance, one-pass warewashing solutions for global restaurant and hospitality markets.
A dishmachine that integrates chemical dispensing should have differentiated Ecolab from competitors who sell only chemicals — but sales results were off course. If Ecolab’s 1200 field representatives had access to simple, valid and reliable information for educating restaurant managers on how to affect dishroom efficiency, they would expand their comfort zones into total system solutions.
The Challenge
To automatically capture and ready-system data for wireless transmission from the Kitchen BrainsTM controller to a tablet PC so that Ecolab analysis software can present graphical and tabular information about operational efficiency and food safety.
The Solution
APEX TSC, the smartest and easiest-to-use warewashing system on the market, provides an effective utility for retrieving valid rack counts from the Kitchen BrainsTM controller. Efficiency ratios are tracked, trended and presented in personalized service reports by Ecolab representatives so that restaurant managers can improve dishroom costs, train crews and implement new procedures.
Business Results

Ecolab Representatives Measure And Analyze Rack-To-Guest Ratios So Managers Can Control And Improve Dishroom Costs

Multipurpose Multi-Zone Controller For Demanding Environments
Kitchen Brains customized its MAC-831 to simultaneously receive inputs to control the dispensing of multiple chemicals while collecting data in the background and readying it for infrared (IrDA) transmission to a tablet PC.

Wall mounted or within the dishmachine footprint
Partnerships For Success
Ecolab’s development team included Kitchen Brains and Jackson MSC [www.jacksonmsc.com]. “Integrating a dispensing system, dishmachine and customized controller wirelessly connected to a tablet PC running Ecolab analysis software was a fast track project that went from conception to production in three months,” said Bill Flynn, Kitchen BrainsTM Vice President.“We knew that controller data was available, but we were unable to easily access it,” said Adrian Hartz, Ecolab Sr. Program Leader. “Kitchen Brains, who we rely on for controls and communications technologies since 1999, proactively participated in focus groups to assist us during needs analysis and in trying to understand our lack of success in selling a high-learning product. They translated our business terminology into technical speci cations and created a cost effective solution for acquiring system performance data. They are easy to work with and managed the risk with us. They aggressively focused on meeting goals and deadlines while developing the IrDA interface.”#teamGENIUS

Tom & Eddie’s: Cooking Consistently Great Burgers

Founded in 2009 by two veteran foodservice executives, Tom and Eddie’s
is headquartered in the western suburbs of Chicago. Backed by 70
years of experience in the industry, this new chain aspires to “put good
taste into everything we do.” Visit www.tomandeddies.com.
Business Situation
Tom and Eddie’s is a new gourmet burger chain that opened their first
official store in August 2010. In order to ensure consistency for each
burger, tuna or chicken product made on the grill they wanted a timer
to tell the cook when to season and to flip.
The Challenge
The nature of Tom & Eddie’s high-volume environment created the need
to provide its staff with a cooking tool that is simple and accurate. Their
desire to serve the highest quality food product plus the ability to train
cooks quickly on this equipment meant it was time for Tom & Eddie’s
to find an innovative cooking system that could deliver results.
The Solution
With a referral from Schweppe, Inc. in Chicago, Tom & Eddie’s sought
out Kitchen Brains as a potential solutions provider for their challenging
grilling demands. After discussing requirements and options, it was
decided that the Kitchen Brains (FASTIMER.) TT-500 Touchscreen
Timer would fill their needs completely. Said John Dixon, Tom & Eddie’s
General Manager, “Today, we are able to cook as many burgers as space
will allow on the grill — each one having their own timer — creating
perfectly cooked products during the busiest of meal periods.”
Results
• Installing the TT-500 gave Tom & Eddie’s the ability to program as many
stages as needed for each product with each stage having its own alarm
sound. Cooks know every step of the way the progress of the product
being grilled.
• The TT-500’s picture-based user interface helps staff to “see” what
needs to be turned, seasoned, or removed from the grill. The ability to
upload pictures of actual products is a huge PLUS.
• Timing the proteins on the griddle ensures consistency for each and every
product cooked.
• Because the TT-500 is so easy to use, reduced training time on the
griddle means cooks can now be more productive in the kitchen. #teamGENIUS

A&W: Making Green In the Great White North

A&W is Canada’s original hamburger chain, opening their first location in Winnipeg in 1956. Since then, A&W has continued to grow, expanding into over 700 locations from Vancouver Island to Newfoundland. At the heart of that growth is the fact that, while so much of our world has changed, the simple things that made A&W so popular in its early days are the same today. Visit www.aw.caBusiness Situation
As part of their ongoing strategy to deliver the best tasting burger, A&W Canada was developing a new larger patty to compliment its existing menu. Simultaneously, operations managers had been assessing their cooking process with food safety always being top of mind.
The Challenge
A&W was looking for a way to ensure that cooking procedures were followed precisely on every batch for all their products, thereby ensuring the best-tasting burger was delivered every time. Additionally, A&W recognized they were no exception to the reality the QSR industry has a high turnover rate and needed the ability to quickly train new staff. Striving for a high quality niche product and the ability to train staff quickly meant A&W needed an updated cooking system.
The Solution
A&W approached Kitchen Brains and other potential suppliers before ultimately choosing Kitchen Brains for its innovative solutions backed
by superior customer support. “Kitchen Brains was ready and willing to customize a solution for us. After further review of the Kitchen Brains product line, we were pleased to find that the standard TRACKER Timers could achieve 98% of our original design specifications,” stated Jeremy Banning, A&W Canada’s Manager of Equipment Services. Today Kitchen Brains’ TRACKER timers reside at the grill cook station and monitor the multi-stage cook process, which includes alerts for sear and flip. Its alphanumeric status display and audible tone alerts prompt crews for the right action at the right time.
Business Results

By installing a staged timer program that included a SEAR and FLIP alarm, A&W found the rate of staff compliance to their cooking process became virtually perfect.

The one multistage cook cycle with action alerts simplified training and enabled the staff to be successful and enjoy a less stressful environment.

Precisely time any combination of products

Avoid food-borne illness by automatically monitoring cook and hold times

Easily programmable count up or down product keys

Intuitive words for product name and action alarm message

3 separate timing cycles per product

6 unique alarm sounds with 3 volume levels

Large green LED displays are easy to read from across the kitchen

4 selectable day part menus

Peer to Peer Communications for automatically transferring time from oneTRACKER to another with Master and Satellite pairing

Brackets for mounting equipment, holding stations, or walls

Smart Commercial Kitchen® network ready

NAFEM Data Protocol compliant when used in conjunction with a gatewayLogical “Next Steps” for Total Quality ManagementAfter seeing positive results from the burger cooking procedures, A&We began using multi-step programming for all of their menu items cooked on the grill.Kitchen BrainsTM Peer-to-Peer Communications provides A&W Canada with a future option to automatically transfer time from the cook timer to the hold timer and prompt the right attention for held food.A Supply Chain Management Business Advantage“Being able to tap into the Kitchen BrainsTM engineering team for design and application ideas while relying on Russell Foods for eld repair kits and just-in- time inventory provides us with the best of both worlds,” said Banning. #teamGENIUS